


what stays and what fades away

by unquietteal



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Hallucinations, M/M, Pre-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-27
Updated: 2016-03-27
Packaged: 2018-05-29 11:20:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6372709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unquietteal/pseuds/unquietteal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>There's no sense to his appearances –  he comes when Steve's out walking, or when he's shopping, or when he's alone like now. And sometimes he stays for hours but sometimes he comes with one breath and leaves with the next.<em></em></em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <em>After the ice, Steve sees Bucky everywhere.</em>
  </em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	what stays and what fades away

The TV is on, the sound low and murmuring through the small apartment, but Steve doesn't pay attention to it. Instead he gazes out the window, watching the people move below him like waves, watching the cars float by. The lights outside – still so bright they hurt his eyes – flood the room in red, green, blue, playing over his features like a spotlight.

It still feels wrong. Everything about this, about now, about the future: it feels like a bad dream, like someone else's reality. Steve misses the muted colours, and the people with their predictable actions; he misses the world he grew up in.

But it's been months now since New York and everyone expects him to be fine, to have adapted, like it's as easy as getting used to a new haircut. And he's trying so hard, but everytime he closes his eyes he can still here Peggy's broken voice over the radio and Bucky's screams as the snow swallowed him whole, and he can still feel the plane breaking through the ice and his lungs filling up with water. 

He never wanted any of this.

"Hey now, don't you think like that," a soft voice filters through the room, and Steve smiles just as softly.

"Hey Buck," he whispers.

"Hey kid," Bucky whispers back. "Why're we whispering? There's no one else here."

Steve can't help the startled laughter that bubbles out of him at that, but he stifles it quickly, afraid that Bucky will disappear between one moment and the next.

There's no sense to his appearances – he comes when Steve's out walking, or when he's shopping, or when he's alone like now. And sometimes he stays for hours but sometimes he comes with one breath and leaves with the next. 

"Don't do that," comes the soft reproach, and Steve can't help it – he turns his head to where Bucky's sitting next to him on the couch, and he loses his breath just like always.

Because Bucky looks the same as he always has: shining blue eyes and carved cheekbones and dark hair swept back and curving pink mouth. And it feels like a punch to Steve's stomach when he sees him like this, because for a moment he can almost imagine that everything that happened didn't, and it's just him and Bucky back in Brooklyn after the war. He can taste it, can touch it with his fingertips, this life they could have had, and when Bucky comes to him like this Steve wants nothing more than to disappear with him back to 1945 and live the life they were meant to.

"Do what, Buck?" Steve asks, his voice breaking silently as he turns his head away. 

It's better if he doesn't look at Bucky, at the reminder of all that he's lost.

"It's okay to laugh, y'know. Hell, I'd be laughing right now, too; it is a pretty funny situation. You, here, in the future," he says, a chuckle drifting into his voice, "and you're still hung up on the past."

He turns to face Steve, and like a magnet Steve turns to him, too.

"But pal, you gotta let it go," he tells Steve, and his expression is so sad that just for a second Steve forgets he's not actually here, and he reaches out a hand before realising and dropping it back onto his lap.

Bucky looks at him sadly, and the smile he conjures up is heartbreaking, and Steve can't look at him for too long so he focuses instead on his hands, on the floor, on anywhere but him.

"That's all gone now, and it ain't ever coming back, and buddy, you gotta remember to live."

"But you're gone, Buck," Steve tells the wooden floor, and he can't quite stop his voice from cracking like glass.

"That's right; I'm gone. I'm gone, Steve, and this ain't healthy. You can't hold on this tight, it ain't good for you."

Steve's heard this all before – it's the same thing Bucky always says when he comes. And he knows that this isn't really Bucky, and he knows that Buck's gone and isn't coming back, but when he's here, in the darkness of this solitary room, it's easy for Steve to pretend.

And Bucky has to leave, because he always does, but all Steve wants is to pretend a bit longer.

"I'm sorry, Buck," he chokes out, "I'm so sorry."

"What for?" he asks, and he sounds unsurprised when he does, like he already knows what Steve will say – but then, of course he would; he's only Steve's subconscious, after all.

"I let go," Steve tells him, voice breaking and splintering, barely able to see anything for the unshed tears coating his eyes.

When Bucky doesn't immediately reply, Steve chances a glance at him, and he looks so shatteringly sad, and when he speaks his voice is soft and imploring. 

"I'm gone, Steve," Bucky whispers, and Steve shakes his head once, resolutely, and looks at the coffee table, trying to remain calm; when he eventually looks up again, Buck's vanished.

***

Steve's in the bread aisle, looking at all the different brands and types and feeling overwhelmed. It's always like this, and when S.H.I.E.L.D. was introducing him to the modern world they never thought to show him the grocery shops and the assortment of products that have different prices despite being all the same.

Why would anyone even need this many options for bread?

"You're telling me," Bucky says in his ear, and Steve almost jumps at the suddenness of his appearance. As it is, he jerks back tightly and gets a worried look from a woman at the other end of the aisle; he smiles to her slightly to show her he's fine.

"Still remember when bread came in loaves?" Steve asks him under his breath, careful not to move his mouth too much.

Bucky chuckles softly, "Yeah, and your ma would send us out early in the morning to get 'em while they were still warm."

"And that one time you convinced me to split it with you then and there?" Steve trails off, glancing at Bucky out of the corner of his eye and raising an eyebrow in amusement.

And Buck lets out a laugh so bright and tinkling that Steve feels the air leave his lungs in one swift motion. He's transported back in time, there in a 21st century supermarket one second and in 1930's Brooklyn the next. Because Buck's laugh – it sounds like summers spent swimming by the docks and cruising the pier, of days spent sprawled on the sticky floor in the suffocating heat and of nights out on the fire escape, passing a soda can from one hand to the other. But most of all, it sounds like home, and Steve thought he'd never hear it again.

By the time Steve's regained his breath Bucky's already disappeared.

***

The TV is playing a mini-series on the Howling Commandos, and this time Steve's making a conscious effort to pay attention to it. He even made a bowl of popcorn, but it remains untouched on the coffee table, because whenever Steve tries to focus on what the actors are saying, all he can see are the real Commandos. 

They're overlaid on the screen like paint, and Steve can't help but notice the differences: how Falsworth never wore his hat that way, or how Dum Dum's moustache was thicker – like a fat caterpillar, they'd all joke – or how Gabe was always smiling no matter how bad things seemed, or how Morita and Dernier were so much more alive than they're portrayed now, always pulling pranks and cracking jokes even in the middle of enemy forests. 

The actors pale in comparison to the real Commandos, and Steve feels the loss like a missing limb – they were brothers, the first real family Steve had ever had, and he feels their absence daily. Steve hears them in all the quiet moments, drinking and laughing, sat around a fire and scattered through the trees. 

But they're only ever in his head and Steve can't figure out why Buck's the only one he sees.

"You know why," Buck says, his voice amused and bright as he sits on the couch beside Steve, close enough to touch.

Steve smiles slightly, only one corner of his mouth turning up, while he keeps his eyes fixed on the TV.

"This is awful, Steve. Why're you even watching it? Look," Bucky points forcefully at the screen, "just look at what I'm wearing!" He sounds indignant, and even Steve has to admit – the costumes are awful. They're impractical, for one, and Bucky always tried to look as stylish as he could, even in the middle of the war, and the costume is anything but.

Steve lets out a drifting chuckle, happy to have Bucky next to him in any way, and Buck joins in. And then they can't seem to stop: the chuckling turns into giggling turns into laughing. And then pretty soon it escalates to Steve laughing so hard his eyes start tearing up, clutching his middle, and Bucky bent over his knees, his hair bouncing and his whole body shaking.

And Steve can almost forget, in these rare moments, that Buck isn't really here; that he's just a figment of his own imagination and longing. Almost.

But when the laughter gradually dies down it comes back to him in waves of crushing despair, and the smile slides off his face like water on leaves.

"I miss you, Buck," Steve whispers into the quiet between them.

"I know, pal," he replies.

The silence stretches.

"Hey, you remember that time in France with the drafty abandoned building?" Bucky asks.

Steve chuckles softly, "Morita and Dernier ended up spending the whole night in there."

"We never heard the end of it." Buck, his tone soft with Steve's memories. "And how 'bout when we were in London, and there was that girl –"

Steve lets out a startled laugh and continues from Bucky, "and Falsworth was so sure she was the one he asked her to marry him –"

"After fifteen minutes!" Buck finishes, and they once again burst into uncontrollable laughter, echoing loudly in the bareness of Steve's apartment.

From there they delve into stories, spilling them out into the stillness of the room like secret offerings, remembering only the good parts of the war. Buck's never stayed for as long as he does now, but he eventually leaves when Steve's face feels like cracking from all the smiling – in between one blink and the next.

***

The pencil in his hand feels stiff yet familiar as it glides across the page.

It's been so long since Steve's drawn anything, since he's felt the need to let something out with lines and shades of grey, but now the compulsion has come back stronger than ever. And so he's taken out a brand new sketchbook – one of the very first things he'd bought upon waking up – and started to fill it aimlessly, letting the drawings work their way through the pencil and onto the paper. 

The past comes to him so quickly it's almost hard to keep up, and Steve lets the faces that haunt him pour out, capturing them forever in frozen magnificence.

Peggy: soft curls and softer eyes, one eyebrow raised slightly and her mouth trying in vain to hide a smirk, beautiful and commanding.

Howard: eyes glinting with intelligence and wit, words already half-formed on his parted lips, the similarities between him and Tony exaggerated. 

Erskine: whole face alight with the joy bursting through his skin and onto the page, his smile quiet and bright, staring off into the future.

Sarah Rogers: hair falling like waves around her shoulders, eyes sparkling and clear, her mouth open in the beginning of a laugh.

The Commandos: all clustered around a table in an overcrowded pub, smiling sloppily, arms around each other, caught mid-song.

And Buck – Steve's drawn him so many times he could do it blind, and his face comes the easiest to him: large eyes, soft mouth, strong jaw, the sweeping curve of his cheekbones and his straight nose, the dip in his chin and the thick lashes.

Steve spends hours drawing; he only pauses when his hand starts cramping up.

And, of course, like clockwork Buck appears.

"I always said you coulda been a professional artist," Bucky tells him softly, peering over Steve's shoulder at the faces staring out of the page, their heads just centimetres apart, and Steve wants nothing more than to turn his face slightly to the right.

Steve snorts quietly, still shading shadows on paper, and replies, "You had too much faith in me, Buck. I was only ever mediocre at best."

"If we coulda afforded art school for longer –"

"You mean if the war hadn't come along –" Steve interrupts, and Bucky glares at him.

"If we coulda afforded it longer," Buck repeats, "then you woulda become so famous the war wouldn't need you, anyway, and you'd be living the good life in New York." 

This, too, is a familiar conversation – Buck insisting that if Steve had only gone longer, taken more lessons, if there had only been enough money, then he would've stayed away from the front lines and back in Brooklyn, like the only reason Steve wanted to fight was to relieve his boredom; like it was that simple.

And Bucky always exaggerated it back then, back when he was trying to convince Steve not to enlist, to stay put; he always talked like Steve could actually be something, a poor artist from Brooklyn risen to the top. He was so passionate that Steve never understood whether he actually believed it, or whether he was just determined to keep him away from all the fighting. And it doesn't really matter, anyway, because Steve left art school the day it was announced they were at war and he'd never gone back.

"C'mon, Buck, you know that never woulda happened. Most likely I'd end up painting signs for shops and you know it."

"Whatever you say, pal." He sits on the floor by Steve's feet and Steve eventually resumes drawing.

Minutes pass, and though Steve knows logically that Buck isn't here, he swears he can hear his breathing, two sets of lungs working; he swears he can feel Bucky's warmth, wrapping around him like an embrace. 

Buck's head rests on the armrest, right by Steve's knee. His hair is dark and silky, like midnight, and Steve is overpowered by the urge to card his fingers through it, to feel it against his palm, to see if it's as soft as it looks.

Instead, he clenches his hand tighter around the pencil and continues to draw in silence.

***

The next day when Steve wakes up, he realises that he's forgotten the exact shade of blue of Bucky's eyes, and he feels his stomach twist and plummet.

He spends the whole morning trying to remember them, playing every memory he has of Buck over and over in his mind, so often that they start to melt and merge together, but he still can't recall them.

He spends the whole afternoon pouring over every picture he can find of him, from old newspaper articles to ones on the Internet, but they're all in black-and-white and his eyes look brown in every single one.

By the time Bucky appears in the evening, Steve's lying on his bed, staring up at the ceiling and feeling vaguely nauseous.

And when Buck sits down at the end of the bed and looks at him, his eyes are grey, so grey they're almost black, and Steve's breath freezes in his throat.

He only just makes it to the bathroom in time.

***

In the park on a bench, Steve sits watching the world go by him – families with strollers, joggers weaving along the path, kids playing tag and hide-and-seek, couples on picnic blankets. It's a beautiful day, and it seems like all of New York has come out to enjoy it.

Steve had come with every intention of drawing – his sketchbook is open on his knees – but everytime he tries to, he gets distracted by the past, by the memories always on the periphery of his mind. 

He gets distracted by this: how the sun, warm and bright, reminds him of Bucky's smile; how the rustle of leaves sounds like Peggy's whispers in his ear, soft and gentle; how the breeze over his skin, in his hair, feels like his ma's hugs. The birds singing sound like conversation; the strangers walking by him turn into his neighbours, his friends, people he thought he'd never see again, people he's left behind, seventy years in the past. 

And everywhere he looks, all he can see is the way it used to be; the past overlaid on the present like watercolour.

"This place hasn't changed one bit," Bucky says, appearing on the bench beside him. 

"We used to camp out here, sometimes, remember?" Steve asks him, recollecting all the nights spent lying side-by-side beneath a star-speckled sky, the whole world asleep except for the two of them.

"'Course I do; how could I forget?"

You couldn't, Steve thinks bitterly. You're only in my head, after all.

Buck glances at him sideways, only his eyes moving. "Sooner or later you're gonna have to accept it, pal." Steve knows what he's talking about.

"I have accepted it," Steve replies, the barest hint of frustration seeping into his voice. 

Bucky raises an eyebrow, unconvinced.

"I watched you fall, Buck. Believe me, I've accepted it."

"Then why won't you let me go?"

A pause.

"Because," Steve says softly, quietly, a secret set free, "I'll lose you forever when I do."

***

The air howling through his ears and whipping past him is frigid, frozen, so cold icicles start to form on his face, spreading down his arms in icy spiderwebs. His hands are numb from clinging to the metal; his lips are frozen and his eyes stingingly dry.

Below him, the landscape rushes past, a blanket of white poured over the mountains. Below him, a ravine snakes along beside the train, deep blue and endless. Below him, Bucky clings, helpless, terrified, to the railing, hands blue from the cold, frozen patterns writing themselves into his skin.

And Steve, try as he might, can't reach him. Everytime he drags himself closer the distance between them increases, multiplies; everytime his fingers touch Bucky's – just as he's about to close his hand around Buck's wrist and haul him back inside into safety, into his arms – he slips further away.

The wind is deafening; the terror is pounding.

"Bucky!" he yells into the chaos, and when Bucky tries to reply the frost creeps down his throat and steals his voice from him, and when he tries to stretch his hand out further towards Steve the metal gives and he falls, plummets, his screams stolen by the rushing of air.

Steve stares at the spot where Bucky vanished, stares and stares and stares, and he doesn't realise he's shouting, screaming, yelling, until his voice collapses and he's left sucking in scraping breaths, tasting the frigid mountains and the swirling ravine thick on his tongue. His tears are hot and heavy, spilling down his cheeks in cascades, in ribbons, and then the train turns a corner and Buck's inaudible grave disappears.

"Steve," comes a gentle whisper in his ear, soft like morning, "Steve, I'm gone."

The wind is deafening; the absence is suffocating.

"Wake up, Steve."

Steve lets go of the railing and falls, swallowed up by the chilling cold.

"Wake up."

***

He startles awake and looks frantically around the room, his eyes struggling to adjust to the dark, the bite of frozen air still stinging on his skin.

"Buck?" he calls out softly, hopefully, and waits.

When there's no reply, he tries again, louder, "Buck?"

Nothing. Nothing except the oppressive, heavy quiet.

I'm gone, Steve.

Wake up.

Wake up.

"Come back," he whispers brokenly into the darkness of the room, but he's met only with crushing silence.

***

The street is crowded, people walking purposefully in waves, and Steve moves along with them.

It's comforting, being surrounded by so many without anyone knowing who he is; to them, he's just a stranger most likely going to work. Steve keeps his gaze straight ahead, following the rhythm of the crowd, baseball cap pulled low.

His eyes catch movement in front of him and he focuses on a man a few metres ahead, wearing a dark blue jacket and leather gloves despite the heat, a curious glint of metal on his left wrist, wondering why he feels so familiar. Then he sees it: the way he walks, loose yet controlled; the posture of his back, the curve of his shoulders, the pacing of his steps; his height, his presence like a magnet, pulling Steve towards him.

Buck.

But then he blinks, and the man turns a corner and vanishes, and Steve shakes his head quickly, quietly, and keeps on walking.

Bucky hasn't visited in months, after all, and Steve's not about to go chase down a ghost.

 


End file.
